Paul Silvia

Do you struggle to find time to write? Do you sacrifice your weekends, summers, and vacations to catch up on writing? While writing, do you feel the urge to curse, gnash your teeth, or rend your clothes and don sackcloth?

APA Books recently published my book How to Write A Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing. It describes how to write during the normal work week; how to write, submit, and resubmit journal articles; and how to write less abominably than the typical psychologist. This lighthearted book won't make writing fun, but it will reduce your sackcloth-donning by at least 40%.*

The APA Books Web page has all of the dirty details. You can get a copy on Amazon for around $9.

 

*Sackcloth-reduction guarantee does not apply to people who own only sackcloth clothing.

FILES, UPDATES, & FUN FACTS:

If you'd like a copy of the SPSS "Writing Progress.sav" file that I described in Chapter 3, here's a file you can download (right-click). And if you like statistics and aren't ashamed of it, here's a SPSS syntax file that will give you stats about your writing (right-click).

I recently wrote this essay, Why Don't We Teach Graduate Students How to Write?, for Dialogue (the newsletter of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, APA Division 8). (If you're teaching a grad class about writing, I'd love a copy of your syllabus.)

If you avoid writing by reading other people's blogs, here's a Chronicle of Higher Education discussion thread about How to Write A Lot.

And if you're interested in workshops for faculty or for graduate students, just call or send me an e-mail (see below).

"What," you may ask, "is the greatest book about writing that I can buy for one penny?" That's an easy one: Sheridan Baker's The Practical Stylist (2/e). It's one of my favorites.

 

And here are some other things that I'm up to:

MY RESEARCH
Here's a list of some recent publications; most of them can be downloaded in PDF format.

DATA FILES & TOOLS FOR RESEARCHERS
Need randomly-generated polygons? Crave archival data files to reanalyze? Want to manipulate or measure self-awareness? Here's stuff for you.

MY ADDRESS:
Paul Silvia, PhD
Department of Psychology
P. O. Box 26170
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Greensboro, NC, 27402-6170, USA

Phone (336) 256-0007
Fax (336) 334-5066

p_silvia@uncg.edu



Last Updated: March 25, 2008

Interested in interest?

My book Exploring the Psychology of Interest was published by Oxford University Press in 2006.

You can get information about this book from Amazon.

I'm currently an associate editor at Motivation & Emotion.

To view recent issues or submit manuscripts, follow this link.